The present disclosure relates generally to dishwashers, and more particularly, to dishwasher status indicators that indicate whether dishes in a dishwasher are dirty or clean.
There are many times when a user may not be sure about the cleanliness of the dishes in a dishwasher. Typically, after a dishwashing cycle is complete on an automatic dishwasher, the user has the option to open the dishwasher, remove one or more dishes as they are needed and close the dishwasher, or the user can proceed to remove all the clean dishes from the dishwasher at once, leaving it ready for dirty dishes to be loaded. After a period of time after the cycle is complete, it can become ambiguous whether or not the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty. This ambiguity is especially common in households having more than one member accessing the dishwasher, or with users who rinse dishes before placing them into the dishwasher.
Current solutions available are problematic. Some dishwashers include a cycle-complete indicator light that illuminates when the cycle is complete. These indicators turn off the next time the dishwasher door is closed, rendering them useless for subsequent openings and closings of the dishwasher door until another cycle is run.
Other problematic solutions to this problem include the use of a sign, which a user would flip and post next to, or on the front of the dishwasher door, telling others that the dishes inside the dishwasher are either clean or dirty. However, this solution can fail when the user forgets to set the sign, fooling people accessing the dishwasher later. Other solutions have included mechanical devices that when inserted inside a dishwasher, will collect water in a basin during a cleaning cycle to activate an element to indicate cleanliness. The problem with this type of solution is that differences in water patterns, placement of the device, and whether or not a dishwasher is a water conserving model can affect whether enough water will be collected to trigger the element. Even when the mechanical element activates correctly, the user is still required to manually reset the device when loading dirty dishes.
Another problem with some existing solutions is that they can only determine whether the dishwasher door is open or closed, and cannot adjust for when a door might be partially open, as in the case when a door latch is tough to close fully so the door is usually left slightly ajar. In such situations, problematic solutions can erroneously mark dishes as dirty when in fact, the door was never opened enough to take out any dishes. In solutions where the time of the dishwasher door is left open is timed, if the door is partially opened to such an extent that only the top rack is accessible, but the bottom rack is not fully accessible, such solutions could prematurely mark dishes as dirty.
When these existing problematic solutions fail often enough, users will tend to ignore what the sign or mechanical device indicates and resort to such time consuming and error-prone methods such as visual inspection and olfactory examination of the dishes inside the dishwasher to determine if they are clean or not. If a user thinks that the dishwasher hasn't been run yet when the dishes are actually clean, and proceeds to add a few dirty dishes to the dishwasher, the user will end up contaminating the entire batch of clean dishes. A user, not knowing that the dishes have already been cleaned, might end up running another cycle, cleaning already cleaned dishes and wasting resources. Not knowing whether the dishes are clean or not increases the risk of consuming foods and beverages from dirty dishes, potentially resulting in illness.